Make a mobile-friendly website

Make a mobile-friendly website

The challenge

Your mobile website has to be easy for mobile users in your new market to navigate and interact with, whether they use iPhones, Android, or other high-end mobile devices.

The aim

To reach the most mobile users in your new market by creating a mobile-friendly web-site that’s tailored to the small screen, making it easy for them to navigate and make purchases, wherever they may be.

The key to a good mobile website is simplicity. You should focus on simple navigation and always highlight the local options of your business. This is never more important than when you enter a new market. Market Finder can let you see how your website scores on desktop speed, its mobile-friendliness, and speed. It has lots of tips on how to make your website mobile-friendly.

Small is beautiful

The mobile screen may be small but it is a powerful medium for anyone entering a potential market abroad. By designing your mobile website around how people use their phones, you can offer your users a rewarding experience and help them do just what they want, from making a call to booking a holiday.

Design for online sales

Simplify site navigation: Streamline your site menu and try to keep everything visible so your users don’t have to zoom in to read.

Make information accessible: Help make it easy for users to explore your products before they commit to a purchase by using expandable product images.

Help people make their purchase: Keep any directions or "buy now" buttons front and centre. If possible use existing account information to limit the amount of data your customer has to enter.

Allow people to pick up again on desktop: Make it easy for visitors to your mobile website to come back to their shopping cart when they're on their desktop computer, so they can finish or review their purchase.

Design for phone calls

Use click-to-call buttons or links: This can make it easy for your site visitors to call you by using buttons or links.

Condense your menu options: If you want people to know that calls are the best way to reach you, show a clickable phone number or button on every page of your site.

Avoid distractions: Keep promotions and other directions to the sidelines so that people can focus on calling you.

Design for forms or leads

Simplify your forms: Make sure your forms are easy to access, and keep data entry as minimal and as thumb-friendly as you can.

Limit scroll and zoom: Your form should fit to the space available on a mobile screen. Scrolling and zooming can cause users to make mistakes.

Choose your data fields wisely: Make sure that the information you're requesting in your form is simple to access and easy to validate. Use validation to show errors for incomplete fields.

Design for shop visits

Encourage visits above all: If you want to encourage people to come to your physical shop, show a map, location button or icon that links directly to your physical address and opening hours on every page of your mobile website.

Avoid distractions: Promotions can help to convince people to visit your shop. Keep them simple so they don’t clutter up navigation.

Design for information and awareness

Simplify navigation: Help people research before they purchase with a simple menu and larger text. Because a mobile screen is smaller, condense your menu options so that people can focus.

Keep consistency across devices: The longer it takes for a customer to commit to buy, the more likely they are to do research on multiple devices before completing the transaction. Help them to pick up where they left off by saving their selections.

Provide a home page link: If someone has hit a dead end in their research, make sure it is easy for them to get back to the home page to begin again.

Don’t have a website for mobile?

Even if you don’t have a mobile website, AdWords will let you show text ads to customers who use Google Search on a high-end mobile device such as an iPhone or Android. Because smartphones have a full internet browser, a customer who clicks on your text ad will still be able to visit your standard website.

Stay clear of Flash

Be sure that your landing page doesn’t contain Flash content. It is not supported by iPhones or iPads and has limited support on Android. Because of this we will automatically limit your ads running on high-end mobile devices.